ESCONDIDO: After closing library branch, city might revive bookmobile

Escondido might revive its mostly dormant bookmobile to serve neighborhoods that lost convenient library access when the city closed its East Valley branch last June to save money.

City librarian Jo Ann Greenberg said the bookmobile, a large van the city bought in 2002 to promote youth literacy, could spend 15 hours per week delivering books and other media for roughly $25,000 a year ---- a fraction of the $192,000 it cost to run the branch.

Councilwoman Olga Diaz and a resident group that opposed the
branch closure
strongly support reviving the bookmobile, which has been rarely used since the state cut a literacy grant that helped pay for it a few years ago.

They say the bookmobile would restore access to books, DVDs and other library materials to East Valley's many senior citizens, children and low-income residents who can't drive to the main branch downtown.

City Council members unanimously agreed last month to have library workers analyze the costs and hurdles to reviving the bookmobile, and possibly expanding its role to serve adults in addition to children.

But Mayor Sam Abed said this week that he would prefer any revival of the bookmobile be funded by donations or grants ---- not city resources.

He said the city has many higher priorities, including buying more library materials and adding extra hours at the main library on Kalmia Street at Second Avenue.

"Paying for the bookmobile would come at the expense of hours or materials," Abed said.

But Mel Takahara, a leader of the resident group Escondido's Future, said it was the city's obligation to serve its neediest residents, especially with city sales tax revenue rebounding strongly over the last 18 months.

"It's relatively inexpensive and it would give the taxpayers some return on the millions invested in the branch library," said Takahara. "It would be a conduit to the materials we own."

He also scoffed at recent suggestions by Abed and Councilman Ed Gallo that it would be unfair to provide special treatment to East Valley when no branch libraries or bookmobiles serve the city's southern, northern or western neighborhoods.

Takahara said East Valley was chosen for the city's first library branch because it's the part of town with the neediest residents, making so-called special treatment appropriate.

Escondido's Future also has been critical of the city's plan to reopen the East Valley branch this June as a
computer lab
. They support having the lab, but say it won't be a substitute for a library.

Greenberg, the city librarian, said she was upbeat about reviving the bookmobile and revamping the materials on board to serve both adults and children.

She said the bookmobile's capacity of 2,000 items is a far cry from the 55,000 items the 12,000-square-foot branch used to hold, but she said it was possible people could request an item on one bookmobile visit and have it delivered on the next.

"I don't like seeing it just idle," she said.

In its heyday, the bookmobile visited local schools every weekday, but Greenberg said cuts to the state's youth literacy program prompted the city to begin using the bookmobile only on rare occasions.

Greenberg said staffing the bookmobile with two trained library associates for 15 hours per week would cost about $25,000 per year.

An additional cost would be maintenance on the vehicle, a 24-foot-long Ford 450 that the city bought in 2002 for $79,000 from a company in North Carolina.

Greenberg said using volunteers would be a bad idea because they would lack the training that library associates have on checking out books with the city's database and offering reference advice.

In addition, city officials said there could be liability pitfalls if volunteers were given access to people's personal library card accounts.